Visitors, Asd Officials Trade Barbs On School Smoking Ban

September 20, 1985|by DAN PEARSON, The Morning Call

Three taxpayers, two of them candidates for Allentown School Board, last night challenged the application of the district's new student smoking ban even though top ASD administrators reported that it is working and steadily gaining effectiveness.

Differences of opinion surfaced at the monthly meeting of the board's education committee attended by Superintendent William H. Stoutenburgh, Robert P. Klova, director of middle and high schools, and Ronald W. Skinner, School Board president.

Thanking the Allentown Education Association (AEA) for support, and its teacher volunteers for helping principals police the ban, Klova said that 39 students have been suspended at Allen High School and six at Dieruff High for violating the rule that prohibits the use of tobacco on district property during school hours (generally 8:20 a.m. to 3 p.m.). The ban does not apply to teachers, administrators or other adult employees.

Attacking what they perceived as a double standard because of adults being exempt were Dale R. LeCount, dean of educational services at Muhlenberg College, and Dr. James B. Hirsh, dean of continuing education at Muhlenberg.

LeCount, who has three children in the school system, told the committee, "There cannot be a double standard because there can be only one standard. And that is the health of the students and faculty of this school district."

Hirsh, one of several candidates in the fall election, who has two children, generally concurred.

"I cannot agree with the administration and School Board that two standards are acceptable. I simply cannot accept it, even though I smoke, will continue to smoke and probablly will die from being run over by a bus," Hirsh commented.

Thomas W. Ruhe, a candidate who also smokes and has a son in the schools, said he opposes the closed lunch periods at Allen High more than the smoking ban that set up the new policy of keeping students confined to the three cafeterias during the lunch breaks.

The cafeteria policy was ordered by Allen Principal Ray Erb Jr. Both the smoking and lunch-room policies were implemented with the start of the 1985-86 term Sept. 4.

"All it did was throw salt on an open wound; to impose the ban and then close the lunchrooms to the point of not even allowing a student to go to his locker to get a book. I think he (Erb) went too far," Ruhe said.

A sore point with some Allen students who smoke is that the ban eliminated a designated courtyard for student smoking that they had sardonically dubbed, "Cancer Court." For many years previously, students who ate a quick lunch could spend the remainder of their break puffing in the courtyard with their friends.

Having backed the 8-0 vote of the School Board with their strong support of the smoking ban, Klova and Stoutenburgh responded to visitor criticism.

"The students are cooperating and they realize there is policy change. The smoking ban was announced at all of the grade assemblies. But some students are concerned that there is a double standard and next Thursday (Sept. 26) I think that you can anticipate seeing groups of students from Allen and Dieruff at the board meeting," said Klova, acknowledging that smokers are asking if the new policy can be changed or modified.

Klova said that Allen's new closed-lunch policy got off to an unfortunate start "because the first day of school was very hot and two of the three lunch rooms are air-conditioned. Which cafeteria would you have gone to?"

The secondary schools chief emphasized, "We'll work hard at it and we know that we have some partisan students. But those students are going to have to know that we mean business."

Dr. William Peters, a college English teacher and committee member who used to smoke a pipe or cigars at board meetings until he stopped several months ago, commented, "I felt very poignant about the students being kept in the lunchrooms during the hot weather. But I voted for the smoking ban, given that everything was done in good spirit."

Stoutenburgh, a non-smoker who is studying the possibility of total smoking ban that would also affect teachers and administrators, said of the new rule, "Implementation of the ban has taken place and I don't think that is is 'back-stepping' one bit."

The superintendent was referring to comments by ban supporters that designated smoking areas (at Dieruff it was called "The Patio") never should have been permitted by officials during instructional hours.

Stoutenburgh bristled at the allegation that ASD has a double standard regarding the smoking ban. "There is no double standard; there's an adult standard and a youth standard. Our society creates such standards for adults and children."

The superintendent said that separate smoking and non-smoking areas are designated in faculty dining rooms, lest anybody think that the rights of teachers are being violated. But he noted that he has met with the AEA, his aides and others, on the poosibility of recommending a total tobacco ban on district property. The Bethlehem Area School District will begin observing such a policy Nov. 1.

But Peters could not abide that idea. "There's no way on earth that I would vote to cut off the adult (from smoking on school property). They are the mature citizens who have the right of choice and they control the students in the schools," Peters declared.